Splitting the screen
Another way to change the view is by splitting the window—also known as splitting the screen. The screen can be split horizontally, vertically, or both. You can therefore have up to four portions of the spreadsheet in view at any one time.
Split screen example
Why would you want to do this? Imagine you have a large spreadsheet and one of the cells has a number in it which is used by three formulas in other cells. Using the split screen technique, you can position the cell containing the number in one section and each of the cells with formulas in the other sections. Then you can change the number in the cell and watch how it affects each of the formulas.
Splitting the screen horizontally
To split the screen horizontally:
- Move the mouse pointer into the vertical scroll bar, on the right-hand side of the screen, and place it over the small button at the top with the black triangle.
Split screen bar on vertical scroll bar
- Immediately above this button you will see a thick black line. Move the mouse pointer over this line and it turns into a line with two arrows.
Split screen bar on vertical scroll bar with cursor
- Hold down the left mouse button and a grey line appears, running across the page. Drag the mouse downwards and this line follows.
- Release the mouse button and the screen splits into two views, each with its own vertical scroll bar.
Notice in the
split screen example, the ‘Beta’ and the ‘A0’ values are in the upper part of the window and other calculations are in the lower part. You may scroll the upper and lower parts independently. Thus you can make changes to the Beta and A0 values and watch their affects on the calculations in the lower half of the window.
 | You can also split the screen using a menu command. Click in a cell immediately below and to the right of where you wish the screen to be split, and choose Window > Split.
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Splitting the screen vertically
To split the screen vertically:
- Move the mouse pointer into the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen and place it over the small button on the right with the black triangle.
Split bar on horizontal scroll bar
- Immediately to the right of this button is a thick black line. Move the mouse pointer over this line and it turns into a line with two arrows.
- Hold down the left mouse button and a grey line appears, running up the page. Drag the mouse to the left and this line follows.
- Release the mouse button and the screen is split into two views, each with its own horizontal scroll bar.
Removing split views
To remove a split view:
- Double-click on each split line, or
- Click on and drag the split lines back to their places at the ends of the scroll bars, or
- Select Window > Split. This will remove all split lines at the same time.
